


First Refusal

by dust_motes



Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: Consent Issues, Infidelity, Intercrural Sex, Jealousy, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Obsessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, background Vortigern/Earl of Mercia, background onesided Vortigern/Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 17:01:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dust_motes/pseuds/dust_motes
Summary: I am a prince. Princes have things they want.Vortigern and desire.





	First Refusal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).

> Recip, hi! Your prompts for this fandom made me go from 'oh, Ritchie's take on Arthuriana, neat I guess???' to 'pumped, ready to go, shipping ALL SHIPS' in 0.5 sec flat, so I owe you big thanks. I had tremendous fun working on this fic and hope to hell and back you will enjoy the final result. Happy RelationShipping! ♥
> 
> R beta'ed, last minute, very thorough. Thank you so much!

"Now I will teach you about blood," Mordred tells him, quiet, as if sharing an unfathomable secret. From the cut on his wrist a steady streamlet of red drips slowly into a silver bowl and turns the water pink. "About the power within it."

The steam rising from the bowl is thick, hot, and oppressive, stuffing throats like wet wool, making the crowd in the tent sweat and stink and fall deeper into a trance. Vortigern is glad for it. This way nobody can hear him snort, nobody can see him smirk.

Mordred, he decided many years ago, is a bloody fool. Today his particular brand of foolishness catches on Vortigern's skin like thorns. He itches all over from it. The chant and the trance pass him by. All he wants is to scratch his face and the insides of his wrists and the side of his neck. He can almost see himself bleed under his fingertips. His blood wouldn’t rise back in fog, like Mordred’s, but in black smoke crackling with lighting. No tricks and no pretences with him. Just the raw deal.

Mordred cuts his other wrist. "And it is cheap. If you know where to look."

(Vortigern won’t bleed. He doesn’t need to. Uther’s skin would part easily under the blade of his knife, his body as eager to spill its secrets all over Vortigern’s hands as it has been time and time again before. In some respects it would feel no different than cutting himself open. Only deeper. Only less alone.)

* * *

"You can’t separate us!" he cries, undignified, like a five-year-old girl, not a man who completed his education and returned home as an asset to the kingdom. Distantly, he knows it’s not a good approach. The king is displeased, his shoulders rigid and wide, his back turned to Vortigern. It is time for diplomacy, not fighting, and besides, Vortigern’s not much of a fighter at all.

Except, apparently, in this.

Fists clenching, he wills himself to be smarter.

When his nails dig into his skin, he takes a breath and says, "Father. Please. Listen to me. Uther and I have always worked well together and for the good of the kingdom we will continue to do so. We—" He doesn’t know how to end this sentence, so he swallows and pretends he’s not swallowing tears. "Our bond is strong."

Finally, his father turns to him. "Your bond is by blood," he spits. "You are brothers. And don’t think I don’t know you are all too keen on forgetting your familial relation any time you want to—"

Vortigern doesn’t hear the end to that sentence, face hot. His shame is a coiled snake in his stomach, ready to strike. He turns on his heel and runs and throws up in the nearest nook.

* * *

As always, they take off their boots before they sneak out of the castle’s servants’ door. Barefoot, they cross the meadow beyond the moat and head towards the hills. Mud clings to their soles. Vortigern slips a lot, but Uther always catches him before he falls.

It’s too cold to be doing this, but the air finally smelled of spring in the morning, and he’s back home for a few months, a much-needed break from his studies with Mordred, and so he dodged his tutors and went to find his brother. He kept bouncing on his heels until Uther looked up from the tactical layout he was studying and sighed and said, "Fine."

It gets harder and harder to convince Uther to make time for him. They used to be joined at the hip, and then Vortigern left, and now he doesn’t even always know where Uther is. He's taken to looking for him with the eyes of the castle's rats. Disgusting, some would say. It doesn't bother him. Every creature has its purpose, even a rat. It feels good to be making use of it. 

From the very upward angle Uther doesn't look like himself very much. The planes of his face are all wrong. Vortigern’s hands itch to reach out and break his bones, to rearrange them into something both more familiar and new.

He tosses the thought away. Running through the mud, this is familiar enough. They’ve been sneaking away since Vortigern was old enough to keep pace with Uther’s long strides. Almost keep pace. There’s always a point, closer and closer to the hilltop with each passing year, where he can’t run any longer, where Uther turns, gets his arms around Vortigern’s waist and twirls them like a lord twirls a lady in a dance. He then throws Vortigern on the half-frozen grass and tickles him until they both can’t breathe. It’s Vortigern’s favorite part of the whole endeavor. Not the thrill of making fools of the guards, not finally climbing the hill after being cooped up in the castle all winter. Uther’s hands on him. 

When he was a child, he used to fake tiredness as soon as he could get away with the deception to get Uther to start playing by Vortigern’s rules. A game, of a kind, like so many other things between them.

No longer a child, he won’t stoop to it today. The temptation is there, of course, nested shallowly under his skin. To see if this one thing has changed as well. To feel Uther’s touch, his quick fingers, his laughter on Vortigern’s face.

Suddenly, he wants it desperately, right now, before the guards catch up and—

There are no guards. In previous years, they always caught up to them by this point. They made noise and called Uther and him names when the officers couldn’t hear. They were an inevitability at their backs, and now there’s nothing.

He stops. "Uther," he says, shivering all over. It really is much colder than he thought it would be. Uther turns to him, teeth gleaming behind half-parted lips. Vortigern crosses his arms over his chest. "The guards. They aren’t coming, are they?" He drags his eyes from Uther’s mouth higher. There’s a shadow of a beard on his cheeks. Vortigern’s never noticed it before. "Why?"

Uther snaps his mouth shut. He drops his boots and sits on a large stone. For a moment Vortigern thinks he’ll lie, but Uther rarely lies, and when he does, he’s no good at it. It’s easy to see through him. At least he keeps his gaze on Vortigern’s face. He looks guilty, too, and it doesn’t suit him in the slightest. "I promised Father this is the last time we’re doing this," he finally admits. Adds, quickly, before Vortigern can interrupt him, "And since it is the last time we escape the castle, he let me—"

Somehow, Vortigern didn’t think it would all change.

"No," he shouts before he can stop himself. He’s recognized Uther’s tone and knows it's pointless. He knows he shouldn’t. His tutors always, _always_, remind him he shouldn’t. He shouts anyway. 

Uther slides down from the stone and kneels in front of him, clasps his wrists in his warm, big hands. Vortigern, far from home, spent months thinking about them, about the callouses from a bow and the hilt of a sword, about the length of his fingers and the delicate skin over his knuckles, and after his return, he’s failed to notice how big they got. He tugs his wrists away, so angry he can't hear himself over blood rushing to his ears. Doesn’t matter. He knows damn well what he wants to say. "It’s because you will be king and I won’t, right? Time to separate the wheat from the chaff."

Uther sighs, patient. Like a slap to the face. "It’s because I have a duty. We’re no longer children, Vortigern. You’re sixteen. Father at your age—"

"Neither of us is Father," Vortigern cuts in, and because it shuts Uther up, he stupidly presses forward, "It's not the point. You just— You don’t love me." The words don’t want to come out of his tight throat. The corners of his eyes burn; he blinks rapidly to get rid of the sensation. "You’ve never loved me," he repeats, louder, firmer. Surer.

Another thing he shouldn’t be saying out loud. There’s a place for love in a prince’s life, in a king’s life, even, but this place isn’t here, on a windy hillslope on a suddenly grey day, with his brother the future king on his knees in front of him. He knows this. Of course he does; his tutors have taught him well. 

He hates them. One day he’ll have their heads.

He turns and starts walking back towards the castle.

"I love you," Uther shouts after him. "I will always love you!"

Weak. Unfit for a king.

* * *

There’s nothing of his brother in the boy lying on his back in the dungeon. Except for the fact that he’s been overwhelmed by the power, of course. That is very Uther-like. But his light hair, his complexion, even the slope of his neck—it’s all _her_.

He goes by Arthur still. Did he remember, Vortigern wonders, or was it a simple draw of luck that the whores that took him in named him the same his royal parents had? And if so, what does it say about the oh-so-mighty bloodline running through his veins? Shit in the gutter, that's what the bloodline is worth.

And the fucking sword should have been made of shit, too.

Vortigern laughs.

Arthur stirs. His head rolls to the left and the flickering light from the torch on the wall casts deep shadows across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. Good. Vortigern doesn’t want to look at him.

* * *

He uses magic to deceive the guards posted outside of Uther’s bedroom and crack open the door to slip inside.

He promised Father he’d never use his power—his hard-earned _skills_—in this place, but Father is dying and promises made to dying men don’t carry a lot of weight inside Vortigern’s mind.

He needs to see Uther before— Before. He needs to look him in the eyes.

To Uther’s credit, he wakes as soon as Vortigern drops his disguise, hand going for the knife under his pillow. Vortigern launches himself onto the bed and straddles his brother’s hips, catching his wrist and pinning it above his head with magically-enhanced speed and strength. The power thrums in him, wild and dangerous, bursts of lighting crackling inside his skull, on his tongue, in his groin like a thousand whips connecting with skin.

Uther stills under the furs. The muscles of his arm relax. He blinks. "Vortigern," he breathes.

Vortigern lets the power ebb and sizzle out. The shift in the air around them is unmistakable and Uther should know now he could free himself from Vortigern’s grip if he wanted.

He must know it. He’s a fool, but not a colossal one. At least, he didn’t used to be.

Uther doesn’t move.

They stay like that for a long moment, frozen mid-motion like one of the stolen Greek statues Vortigern saw in Rome. Appropriate, seeing as this is stolen, too, and they’ll have to give it back soon.

Uther swallows and wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, opens and closes his mouth. His wrists are branding Vortigern’s palms with their heat. Vortigern's thumbs touch Uther's pulse points. Their hearts are once more beating in the same rhythm.

Vortigern grows hard in his breeches. He groans. His hips jerk forward and back.

Uther's lips part. "Vortigern," he repeats. An empty word. They haven’t talked in almost a year, ever since his engagement was announced. "Vortigern, I—"

Vortigern doesn’t want to hear what he has to say. He almost doesn’t want to be here at all, except for how he’s leaning down, towards the vortex and not away from it. You fool, he thinks, to Uther, to himself, to the world at large, and bites Uther’s lips, smears blood between their mouths in a parody of a sacrifice. Their sharp teeth clash. Their tongues brush. An explosion of light swallows Vortigern's mind.

They are kissing like it’s ten years ago, like they have a lifetime in front of them, together or at least not far apart. They’re kissing like it matters and it will keep mattering until they die. They’re kissing and they are panting into each other’s mouths, hard as their cocks are hard, the furs separating them heavy and thick and Vortigern has half a mind to just burn them to ash. He’s no longer gripping Uther’s wrists. One of Uther’s hands is clasped onto his side, the other tugs on his hair, yanking him closer. They’re kissing and Vortigern knows it won’t last nearly long enough.

Uther is gentle when he puts a stop to it, both hands planted firmly on Vortigern shoulders, and Vortigern hates him more than ever for it. "I can’t," Uther says. But he doesn’t shove Vortigern off. "I can’t." His fingers twitch against Vortigern's shirt, as if on the cusp of a caress. "Igraine—"

Vortigern’s hand flies to Uther's neck. It seems transparent against a black beard, dainty and delicate as a fucking lily-of-the-valley, but Vortigern knows its strength. The power surges up in him and the wicks of all the candles in the chamber come to life. Under his palm, Uther’s windpipe is begging to be crushed. Under his palm, Uther’s heartbeat is a war-song pouring out of his veins into Vortigern’s marrow and bone. Under his palm, Uther, his Uther, whom he doesn’t have at all.

"Don’t speak her name in front of me," Vortigern hisses and raises his left hand. The flames flicker and die. He squeezes with his right one. Uther's breath hitches. His own hands are on Vortigern's elbows now. He could pull him in if he wanted. The slightest pressure would suffice. 

A bell rings out. In twelve hours, Uther will be a married man. Right now, he swallows. His throat moves under Vortigern’s hand like a mountain rising up. 

Vortigern wants to kiss it. He wants to rip it out.

He could make Uther forget every name except Vortigern's and his own. Maybe one day he will and he’ll watch his brother go about his days never using his wife’s, his friends’ names and pretending it’s by choice. He could make him do other things, too. Everything. Everything Vortigern wanted. And maybe one day he will get his magic’s tenterhooks in Uther’s mind and stretch it wide, make a canvas out of it for Vortigern to paint his image on.

Uther's breathing hard. Vortigern has been careful with his hand, so it's not the lack of air.

This is a power, a form of magic, too. To make Uther breathe hard. To make Uther hard, with his body, not the dark allure of his mind.

He lets go of Uther’s throat to yank at the back of his shirt, taking it off and flinging it away. He rises on his knees and starts unlacing his breeches. "Throw me out," he tells Uther. "If you truly want. I will go."

He doesn’t know if he’s lying or not and he’ll never have to find out. Uther closes his eyes and groans. His hands drop onto Vortigern’s thighs, heavy and trembling. They crawl up to Vortigern’s lace ties. Their fingers entwine. Vortigern lifts their tangled hands to his lips, grazes Uther’s knuckles with his teeth, licks the sting away. Uther keeps fumbling with his breeches, gives up, slips his hand inside when they’re only half-open. He’s shaking or maybe Vortigern is shaking or maybe they both are. Inside his mind, Vortigern can admit he doesn’t give a damn; he just wants to touch and be touched. He makes a sound when Uther’s fingers close around his cock. His callouses are more pronounced, sliding up and down. "Fuck," he says. "Fuck." He can’t keep his mouth shut. "_Uther_."

"Vortigern," Uther replies, and oh. There’s meaning behind the word now, meaning and purpose and want. "Vortigern." He thumbs Vortiger’s leaking tip, takes his hand away. Puts his fingers in his mouth.

All bets are off.

They don’t manage to undress without help, stopping too often to kiss and grope and bite. Vortigern has to use magic to rid them of their clothes, breeches and nightshirts and underpants flying to the floor, vanish the furs between them and to flip Uther onto his hands and knees. They both groan when he lands. Uther’s raspy voice is a lot. Vortigern steadies himself with his hands on Uther’s arse. He almost, _almost_, summons oil to his fingertips, but he’s too far gone by this point. Magic takes precision and a strong will, and with the long lines of his brother’s body in front of him, with his back shining with sweat and his muscles trembling under Vortigern’s touch Vortigern has neither, and no control to speak of.

He ends up sliding his cock between Uther’s thighs and pushing his legs together. It’s warm there, slick with sweat, and Uther makes a soft broken noise when the tip bumps into his balls from behind. Vortigern groans and drapes himself on his brother’s back. Uther supports his weight easily, gasps quietly as Vortigern fucks his thighs, whines every time Vortigern’s cockhead presses into his flesh, whines louder when it retreats. 

Vortigern remembers wanting to take his pleasure and go, to leave Uther hard and bereft, and he can’t believe he thought of such an idiotic plan.

He wraps his hand around Uther’s cock and loses himself in their fucking, in his borther’s body surging up, up, up, hard and pliant at once, in their shared need. His hips pick up speed, his hand picks up speed, Uther reaches blindly back and digs his fingers into Vortigern’s thigh.

It’s what does him in. The familiarity of Uther’s touch, his desperation matching Vortigern’s own one to one, pushing back against him after Vortigern’s every thrust. He moans, low and long, his cock pulsing trapped between Uther’s thighs, cockhead jerking against his balls, painting the skin translucent white. Uther pants. Vortigers puts his mouth to his shoulder and bites down, hard, keen on leaving a mark. 

He hoped to make him angry; he makes him come. 

They pant and pant and when they come down from their high, silence settles between them like snow. They really do deserve one another, Vortigern thinks, pushing himself off his brother’s body. Without his heat, he’s cold. He grits his teeth.

Predictably, Uther turns his back to him, aggressively not watching as Vortigern picks up his clothes and puts them on. Vortigern doesn’t miss his gaze on him. He spots Uther’s nightshirt on the floor and throws it at him. "Do come find me in the evening," he says. Considers stopping there, but his come has not yet cooled on Uther’s skin and Uther’s broad back is an invitation in itself and it happened, they fucked, he, at least, won’t pretend otherwise. So he adds, "After you’ve bedded her and it has been terrible." An angry smile twists his mouth. "Find me in my chambers. I’ll even let you come in my arse, just as you like."

* * *

Arthur wakes and starts talking and Vortigern takes it all back. He sounds like his father. He has his father’s attitude. And his eyes.

Once he saw it, Vortigern can’t unsee it. 

So. There’re his eyes. And the breadth of his shoulders. And the line of his jaw, and the hollow of his throat, and if Vortigern were to open up his shirt, he bets his collarbones would jut out exactly as Uther’s did. 

He needs to leave. He needs to leave now.

At least Arthur, unlike Uther, makes it easy for him. Vortigern pretends it’s a royal exit and not an escape and maybe he fools his nephew—an easy task, seeing as he _is_ a fool, just like his father. Some things never change—but he doesn’t fool himself.

Also, he’s hard.

He calls Mercia to the throne room and throws everyone else out. "My king?" Mercia asks, but his knees are already bending. "My king, are you all right?" The syllables of Vortigern's title sound as filthy in his mouth as his tone is reverent. Usually, Vortigern rather likes Mercia's contradictions. It doesn't hurt that he looks good on his knees. Today, he has no patience for him.

He puts his hand behind Mercia's head and brings it closer to his cock. Mercia noses at it though the layers of clothes, while Vortigern fumbles with his ties in his haste to get it out. He needs to forget. Like even magic can’t make him.

He holds his cock in one hand and presses the tip to Mercia’s lips. With the other, he takes off the crown and puts it on Mercia’s head. "Suck a little before I fuck your face," he instructs. "Take breaks. Talk to me. Call me ‘brother’, not ‘king’." Nothing they haven't done before.

He pushes in.

* * *

"Brother?" Uther calls, his voice echoing off the empty walls of the northern tower. Vortigern has hoped he would find him here—not that he’s made it difficult for him. His faith in his brother’s intelligence is limited—but the relief surges up in him like high tide. He can’t imagine what he would’ve done if Uther hadn’t come. "Brother?" He’s getting closer. 

Vortigern wipes away his tears.

It’s too dark to see Uther’s face when he reaches the top of the stairs, so Vortigern summons a ball of fire onto his palm. It merrily roars to life this time, not like down there at the feast, in front of all of Father’s lords. He almost, almost wants to snort.

Uther sits beside him on the windowsill, puts a hand on the side of his neck, and squeezes. A warmth that has nothing to do with the fire in his palm floods Vortigern from toes to the top of his head. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time he doesn’t push it away. "Are they still laughing?" he asks Uther.

"Nobody was laughing," his brother lies. Vortigern looks at him until he amends, "And if they had, I would’ve made them stop."

I would’ve hit them until they stopped, he doesn’t say, but Vortigern knows that's what happened. Uther isn’t a violent man, a quality that, one day, Vortigern is sure, will be his downfall, but he is a protective one and sometimes lines blur. Vortigern more often than not reaps the benefit of it. Father will be furious. Vortigern smiles. Uther’s gaze flicks to his mouth, then he drops it, and he drops his hand.

Vortigern follows it with his eyes. The knuckles are bruised.

He lets go of the flame and in the darkness, he reaches out and claps his brother's fingers in his. They’re the same, just in reverse. They are the same flesh and blood. "I just—" he starts before Uther can remember he should be gently disentangling himself from Vortigern like so many times before. "I just wanted to—" To show off. But Uther wouldn’t understand that. He doesn’t need to prove his value to anyone. Everybody sees it, plain as day. 

"You wanted to?" Uther prompts. His hand lies motionless like a dead animal in Vortigern's grasp, but it is still in his grasp. Good enough.

Vortigern shrugs. "I want many things. I can’t have most of them. It seems unfair. I am a prince. Princes have things they want. Why can’t I have anything that matters?" 

"You have your studies," Uther protests. What's worst of it, it's eager and sincere. Vortigern doesn't even get mad. Uther bites his lip and adds, "You have me."

If only.

Vortigern yanks him closer. A spark jumps from his fingertips and fizzles on the inside of Uther's wrist. The air between them is heavy with the wine they both drank. Vortigern asks,"Do you ever worry?"

"Worry? About what?"

"That I won't be coming back."

He must, of course. His studies with the Mages are a diplomatic mission, not a personal endeavor, no matter how much he likes them. Uther knows all this as well as Vortigern himself.

"Yeah," he breathes. "I do. All the time. Brother, I—"

Another thing Vortigern wants: for Uther to say his name now, in the intimacy born out of blood and night, like sealing a covenant. He doesn’t wait to see if he can have it. He cranes his neck and tips up his head and closes the remaining distance between them, slowly, like a hunter on a hunt.

Uther is utterly still under his touch, and wary, and equally soft and hard, but his mouth yields to Vortigern’s as if he were born a vassal, not a liege, and he lets Vortigern kiss—kiss, kiss, _kiss_—him and pretend he’s found a peace in it.

And when Uther kisses back, for a while Vortigern believes he truly has.


End file.
